Honda Asia Team Tady to race in Moto2™

Ex Honda GP rider Tadayuki Okada will launch the new Moto2 team “Honda Asia Team Tady” in 2013, in order to strengthen the Japanese presence on the grid.

The team will start with 1 rider in 2013, managed by Tady, run by experienced Japanese and European GP engineers and staff. For the last few years, Tady has been frustrated and unhappy to see the Japanese riders struggle in GP field where he had spent all his energy and tried to achieve his goal, and had been thinking how he can give them his hands. This had originally given him the idea to create a system for improving the skills of Japanese riders by passing on all his racing experiences.

At the same moment, he remarked the huge growth of motorcycle market in Asian countries and the recent improvement of the performance of Asian riders which had inspired him to create the new concept structure for an entire Asian racing field, not only Japanese.

Asian Championship promoter “Two Wheels Motor Racing” and Honda Motor Corporation., Ltd. had already collaborated with each other, having created the “Asian Dream Cup Championship” with Honda’s CBR250R in the Asian Championship series starting from 2012 for the purpose of producing good Asian riders to race in GP, and this was a good reason to convince Honda Motor Corporation to support Tady’s idea.

Thanks to the understanding and support from Honda, this new project has launched for 2013, and the aim is to have more riders in the future coming into Moto2 and Moto3, targeting to bring competitive riders into the top category of MotoGP.

The team will exclusively collaborate with MORIWAKI Engineering, and will work together to develop a competitive bike in the Moto2 category in 2013.

Yuki Takahashi, who has the experience of riding MORIWAKI and is one of the nominated rider of the team, tested the bike in Valencia on Monday, but the final decision on the rider will be made the end of November.

Tadayuki Okada

“First of all, I’m very happy and very excited to inform people about my new team “Honda Asia Team Tady”, which will be launched in 2013. Since I had started road racing when I was 18, my dream was always to be a GP rider and be the World Champion. I had been making effort days and days for achieving to my goal, and finally I’ve got a chance to be supported by HONDA, being a HRC factory rider, and had won 250cc All Japan Championship 3 consecutive years in ’89, ’90 and ’91. After having won the championship three times in Japan, my ambitious had flown to World GP, and HONDA had finally given me the great opportunity to challenge for GP for the first time in ’93 and this had changed my entire life.”

“Starting from the 250cc class, and later in 500cc class, unfortunately I could not win the champion during my 8 years of GP carrier but finished 2nd in 500cc in ‘97, which was the best result for Japanese rider in 500cc class, and I really had great experiences battling with the world top riders together grace of the support of HONDA.”

“Through my all the experiences of racing with HONDA including the GP and WSBK ride, team manager of British Superbike, development of MotoGP machine, and racing advisor for young riders, my next target now is to give all these my experiences to young riders who are dreaming to be motorcycle world champion like I did, give them chances to have the same experience that I had done, and challenge again to make my dream comes true together with them.”

“Being a team manager in GP is the first time experience for me, but I’ll give my best effort to make the competitive team, grow up the rider’s skill and wish to play an active role in the paddock.”